Tag / circuit bent

I think a lot of this Circuit Bending business is just an excuse some adults are using to allow them to keep playing with kiddie toys. It’s a good excuse! This Chinese Animal Apple was bent by Freeform Delusion. You can buy some of their bent stuff on ebay: click here

If your in Chicago on June 4 be sure to go to the 4th Annual Experimental Garage Sale. I think it’s a good chance to pick up a unique “musical” instrument and talk with some top benders. Head to the official Facebook Event page to see a list of sellers: link

I went to the Bent Festival a few years ago. I remember walking into The Tank and immediately playing with a typewriter that was hacked/tuned to play music. This year’s Bent Festival continues to bring New York’s live Circuit Bending concerts, installations, workshops and lectures. The festival is this weekend April 22-24, 2010 at 81 Front Street in Dumbo (Brooklyn).

“The Bent Festival is an annual art and music festival celebrating DIY electronics, hardware hacking, and circuit bending. Each year we invite artists from across the country and around the globe to perform music with their home-made or circuit bent instruments, teach workshops to adults and children alike, create beautiful art installations and to generally come together, face to face, and showcase the state of the art in DIY electronics and circuit bending culture.” – bentfestival.org

Here’s two great circuit bending videos. Which one makes you happier? The first video is of a bent Yamaha QY10. It’s from stylinghead (Jesse) and this one can be your very own for $250. I really like the black panel with paint splatter on it. It’s like some sort of sound galaxy thing going on. This is one of the more noisy bends I’ve seen and I could see putting this on the table at some party around 6:00AM.

“This video shows some of the noisy things it can do. It also gets tight and ticky, warm and weird and everything in between.” – stylinghead

Next up we have a Talking Cash Register from Michael Una. This unit seems to be a nice fit if your making minimal or Kraftwerk (Amazon link) style material. I love a speech synthesizers and cash so I’m happy.